The Next Web’s Weekly Recap

Welcome to The Next Web’s Weekly Recap. Also make sure to check out The Next Web’s Podcast (iTunes or XML) where we talk about the weekly tech news.

This week saw a bunch of great talks given at the annual LeWeb conference in Paris, a slew of search announcements by Google as well as the much anticipated release of Chrome extensions and Chrome for the Mac. Also, Facebook’s new privacy settings began to be rolled out.

Google Launches Real Time SearchThis week Google launched real time search which includes results from Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. Real time results are in a special area at the top of the results page (demonstration video). Google also announced a bunch of new search features including searching by voice, location and by sight. In the mobile search space, Google updated its iPhone app and also announced that they were making a push for QR codes that allow you to scan a code and be brought to a specific webpage. Google’s announcements continued through Friday when they announced improved search suggestion features.

Facebook Updates Privacy SettingsThis week Facebook began to rollout the new privacy settings that were announced last week. The new settings required users to go through a transition tool to update their privacy settings form the old settings to the new settings. Although the new settings clearly nudge users to the “Everyone” setting (all content available to all users, even those not on Facebook), Facebook does appease privacy advocates and users who want to keep things private by giving users the ability to select who can see individual pieces of content. Zuckerberg, who opened his Facebook page up to everyone, clearly sees the value with things being open (as with Twitter). In other Facebook news this week, the WSJ estimated that Facebook’s revenue will be $710 million (USD) in 2010. To see how Zuckerberg has managed to create this empire so quickly plan on checking out the Facebook movie, which announced this week that it will be released in October of 2010.

Mike is passionate about the web and the startup companies building the Social Media technologies of tomorrow.
Connect on Twitter (@bracco) and check out his personal site (mikebracco.com) for more information.